VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
-------------------

NGUYỄN HÀ SÂM

AN ACTION RESEARCH ON IMPROVING 10th GRADE STUDENTS’
READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH THE TEACHING OF
LEXICAL INFERENCE STRATEGY
AT HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIFTED STUDENTS,
HANOI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION
(NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG VỀ VIỆC NÂNG CAO KHẢ NĂNG
ĐỌC HIỂU CỦA HỌC SINH THÔNG QUA VIỆC GIẢNG DẠY
CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐOÁN NGHĨA CỦA TỪ VỰNG
TẠI TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG CHUYÊN,
ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI)
M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 6014.0111

Hanoi, 2014


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
-------------------

NGUYỄN HÀ SÂM


Hanoi, 2014

Nguyen Ha Sam

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This thesis could not have been completed without the help and support from a number
of people.
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Assoc. Prof. Dr.
Vo Dai Quang, my supervisor, who has patiently and constantly supported me through
the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have
inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher.
A special word of thanks goes to my students, without whom it would never have been
possible for me to have this thesis accomplished.
Last by not least, I am greatly indebted to my family for the sacrifice they have devoted
to the fulfillment of this academic work.

ii


ABSTRACT
This study was intended to investigate the impact of lexical inference strategy on
10th grade students‟ reading comprehension ability. More specifically, the researcher
strived to (1) examine whether students‟ lexical knowledge had any correlation to their
reading ability, (2) whether the teaching of lexical inferencing had a positive effect to
enhance tenth grade students‟ reading comprehension, (3) investigate the students‟

Table 9: Correlation between the Two Tests Before Lexical Inferencing Instruction ..... 30
Table 10: Correlation between the Two Tests After Lexical Inferencing Instruction ...... 30
Table 11: Percentage of the Students’ Correct Answers in the Pretest and Posttest ......... 31
Table 12: Results of Question 1 in the Questionnaire After the Posttest ......................... 33
Table 13: Results of Question 2 in the Questionnaire After the Posttest ......................... 33
Table 14: Results of Question 3 in the Questionnaire After the Posttest ......................... 33
Table 15: Results of Question 4 in the Questionnaire After the Posttest ......................... 34
Table 16: Results of Question 5 in the Questionnaire After the Posttest ......................... 34
Abbreviations
T: Teacher
S1: Subject 1 in the interview
S2: Subject 2 in the interview
S3: Subject 3 in the interview
HNUE: Hanoi National University of Education
L2: second language

iv


TABLE OF CONTENT
DECLARATION………………………………………………………………………..i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT………………………………………………………….......ii
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………....iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, TABLES AND FIGURES………………………………iv
TABLE OF CONTENT……………………………………………………………...…..V
PART A: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1
1.1. Rationale for the Study .........................................................................................1
1.2. Aims of the Research ............................................................................................2
1.3. Objectives of the Research ...................................................................................2
1.4. Research Questions ...............................................................................................3


2.6.1. Reading Materials ...........................................................................................22
2.6.2. Steps of the Instruction in Lexical Inferencing ..............................................23
2.7. Data Collection Procedures ..................................................................................25
2.8. Data Analysis .........................................................................................................26
2.9. Summary ...............................................................................................................27
Chapter 3: Findings and Discussions ..........................................................................28
3.1. Preliminary Investigation ..................................................................................28
3.1.1. Findings ......................................................................................................28
3.1.2. Discussion ...................................................................................................29
3.2. Evaluation ..........................................................................................................30
3.2.1. Research Question 1 ...................................................................................30
3.2.2. Research Question 2 ...................................................................................31
3.2.2.1. Results from Pretest and Posttest ............................................................31
3.2.2.2. Discussion ...............................................................................................31
3.2.3. Research Question 3 ...................................................................................32
3.2.3.1. Results from Questionnaire After the Posttest ........................................33
3.2.3.2. Discussion ...............................................................................................34
3.2.3.3. Results of the Interview ...........................................................................35
3.2.3.4. Discussion ...............................................................................................37
3.3. Summary ............................................................................................................37
PART C: CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 39
3.1. Recapitulation......................................................................................................39
3.2. Conclusions ..........................................................................................................39
3.3. Limitations of the Research ...............................................................................40
3.4. Suggestions for Future Research .......................................................................41
REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 43
APPENDICES……………………………………………………………………………I

vi

students‟ reading comprehension (Dechant, 1991). The results are limited vocabulary
knowledge and inadequate reading ability.
One possible explanation for the abovementioned problem can be found in Miller
and Perkins‟ study (1989), in which the researchers indicated that in most reading
classrooms, students have received inadequate instructions on reading skills and
1


strategies. Teachers normally stress on the production of reading comprehension rather
than the reading process. Therefore, a better way of teaching and learning reading
skills, as many researchers have suggested, is to equip students with the strategy of
guessing word meaning from context and to help them become independent readers.
Particularly, 10th grade students may have not been taught any reading strategy before.
They have acquired a range of vocabulary and grammar after five to seven years of
learning English. Now it is urged that they be taught learning strategies to become
better and more efficient learners.
With a view to gaining some insight into reading strategies and reading strategy
instruction, I chose to study how to improve students‟ reading comprehension through
the teaching of lexical inference strategy. The rationale for my focus is that lexical
inference strategy plays a critical role in successful reading (Sullivan, 1978). Although
the importance of lexical inferencing has been highlighted in a number of empirical
studies, much remains to be learned about it.
1.2.

Aims of the Research

The study aimed at improving reading comprehension ability of 10th grade students at
High School for Gifted Students (HNUE) through lexical inference strategy instruction,
and giving recommendations on how to teach students to use lexical inference strategies
effectively to enhance their reading abilities.


This study only focused on the teaching of lexical inference strategy to grade 10
students at High School for Gifted Students, so the teaching of other reading strategies
or to other subjects would be beyond scope.
1.6.

Significance of the Research

This study focused on investigating the effect of the vocabulary learning strategy lexical inferencing - on students at High School for Gifted Students, especially on tenth
graders. For students in the tenth grade, exposure to a large amount of reading and
learning new words in reading can develop good habits in terms of English learning as
they begin high school. Thus, as mentioned above, if the instruction of lexical
inferencing leads to good results, it can be put to use in wider scale. In addition, this
thesis study also investigated students‟ attitudes towards the instruction, so that teachers
could have a better idea about how to help students learn English.
1.7.

Structural Organization of the Thesis

The thesis is organized as follows:
Part A - Introduction – provides an overview of the study.
Part B - Development - consists of three chapters:
In Chapter One – Literature Review, a review of relevant literature on this issue is
presented.

3


In Chapter Two – Research Methodology, a description of research methods is
discussed in detail, including a description of selection of the participants, data

background (i.e. whether readers are first language learners or not) nor any specific
level. But, when speaking of second language learning through reading, Barnett (1989)
stressed that the reading models mostly widely used for readers are bottom-up, topdown, and interactive. Barnett (1989) explained that the bottom-up model is essentially
text-driven. In other words, it focuses on learners‟ decoding ability during reading. It
seems that the reader tries to reconstruct the writer‟s meaning by recognizing letters and
words. The top-down model is viewed as reader-driven. It emphasizes both using
learners‟ prior knowledge and constructing meaning from written text by predicting,

5


sampling, confirming, and correcting in reading comprehension. It seems that learners
with more or less reading proficiency have the ability to make predictions, and their
general knowledge becomes more important for their reading comprehension. As for
the interactive model, it stresses reader ability to switch between the top-down and
bottom-up models during reading comprehension. The reading strategy of this model is
more flexible and can be employed according to learner competence.
When the three reading models are applied to second language reading, some
problems still exist. For example, foreign language readers are not usually fully
proficient about the phonological system when reading. Further, for foreign readers, the
differences and distance in terms of culture, and the distance inherent in any target
language text can also make reading comprehension more difficult. Nevertheless,
Barnett (1989) still claimed that the three reading models have their own advantages in
terms of developing learners‟ reading ability. In addition, the goal of each reading
model is to make foreign language readers succeed in reading target texts. Since
reading is a “psychological guessing game” (Goodman, 1982), by guessing through
reading, readers can “reduce their dependence on the print and phonics of the texts”
(Barnett, 1989). However, what can readers do when they encounter unknown words?
How can readers go through reading without any interruption? As mentioned
previously, the most useful strategy for coping with vocabulary is guessing words from

Meta-cognitive
Monitoring
Selfmonitoring

Evaluating
Selfevaluation

Cognitive
Top-down
Bottom-up
Elaboration
Grouping

Social
Cooperation

Transfer

Deduction

Inferencing

Recombination

Summarizing

Translation
Key
method


develop reading skills, then the teacher should not spend too much time on vocabulary
instruction. However, if the purpose of the lesson is to develop learners‟ vocabulary,
then the teacher needs to spend some time on particular vocabulary and on vocabulary
learning strategies. The strategies of guessing from context, using word parts, and
dictionary work require a lot of time, but once these strategies are mastered, they more
than repay the time invested in them (Nation, 1990). Nation (1990) summarized the
possibilities for the instructors to deal with unknown words while teaching reading.
1.

Ignoring unknown words: It is often recommended that learners should be

encouraged not to look up every unknown word that they meet in a reading text.
Freebody and Anderson (1983) found that readers skipped unfamiliar words and even
parts of sentences containing them if they did not seem to be necessary to follow the
theme of the text or to do the task they were set. Putting a time limit on such reading
will also make ignoring some unknown words an advantage (British Council Teachers,
1980).
2.

Giving the meaning quickly: In some situations, translation will be the most

effective way. Usually the teacher will give the meaning that works in the context. If
the word has useful parts, quick analysis of the word will not take much time and will
have useful effects.
3. Pre-teaching vocabulary: One way of stopping vocabulary work from interrupting
reading is to pre-teach vocabulary in the text. This can be a useful procedure but there
are several difficulties associated with it (Nation & Coady, 1988). First, the research
has not shown the gains in comprehension as a result of pre-teaching vocabulary.
Second, pre-teaching takes away the opportunity for learners to use their guessing skill.


comprehension (Bialystok, 1979). Furthermore, it is recognized as an essential
component of the process of reading comprehension, which postulates that reading
involves an interaction between textual information and prior knowledge of the reader.
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Lexical inferencing involves making informed guesses of word meanings in light of
all available linguistic cues in combination with the learner‟s general knowledge of the
world (Haastrupt, 1987). If used in an effective way, it can serve for purposes of
immediate comprehension in a listening, interaction, or reading context, and under
favorable conditions, it may lead to retention of the word form as well as semantic and
other lexical information (Patribakht & Wesche, 1999).
Clarke and Nation (1980) proposed a strategy of guessing words from context and
this strategy is considered very simple for learners to use when they encounter
unknown words in context. The strategy can be divided into five steps. The five steps
do not need performing in order, and they are as follows.
Step 1: Look at the unknown word and decide its part of speech. For example, is
the word a noun, a verb, or adjective?
Step 2: Look at the clause or sentence containing the unknown word. In this
step, learners can ask themselves some questions such as “Who does what to whom?”
or “What does what?”. Learners can find clues in the immediate grammar. In other
words, learners use local clues to guess the meaning of unknown word. For example,
“Typhoon Nari destroyed the city.” Here “destroyed” is an unknown word and learners
can guess that the typhoon did something to the city. With the help of the surrounding
clue, learners can guess that the word may have a negative meaning.
Step 3: Look at the relationship between the clause and sentence containing the
unknown word and other sentences or paragraphs. It means that l earners can use global
clues to guess the word meaning. Pay attention to transitional words such as “but”,
“because”, or “in other words”. Therefore, it is important to find if sentence pattern
belongs to the one such as cause and effect, condition, contrast, clarification, or

the guessed word they get in context before consulting a dictionary. Afterwards, they
can have more impressions and a better understanding of the guessed word. Finally, by
using the strategy of lexical inferencing, learners can practice seeking information and
making predictions of the word in context, which can in turn develop their reading skill.
1.1.2.3. Factors that Affect Lexical Inferencing
Paribakht (2005) divided the factors affecting lexical inferencing into two broad
categories: contextual factors and learner-related factors. According to Paribakht
(2005), contextual factors are referred to as “the number of occurrences of the unknown
words, the importance of the unknown words to text comprehension, the density of

11


unknown words in the text, text length, comprehension tasks and word characteristics
and the existence of clear contextual clues”. It seems that the design of the text and the
use of vocabulary both play a crucial role in the success of lexical inferencing. On the
other hand, learner-related factors include “learners‟ backgrounds; previous learning
experience; size of receptive vocabulary knowledge; procedural knowledge; attention to
details in context, including ability and inclination to use context effectively;
preconceptions about the meaning of the word; and the usefulness of previously known
information in cue utilization”. From the description of these learner-related factors, it
is obvious that what affects the success of lexical inferencing is strongly connected to
learners‟ knowledge of words and texts.
As mentioned previously, lexical inferencing is a very important way of incidental
vocabulary learning. However, to achieve successful guessing, in addition to contextual
and learner-related factors proposed by Paribakht (2005), some more detailed factors
should also be discussed. Schmitt (2000) proposed seven factors that affect inferencing
success. These factors are described as follows.
1. The context must be rich enough to offer adequate clues to guess a word‟s meaning.
2. Readers are better able to use local clues in proximity to an unknown word than more

introspective and retrospective think-aloud protocols of those participants. The learners
were asked to infer new word meanings from context. In a total of 199 inferential
responses, 51 (25.6%) were successfully inferred, 37 (18.6%) were partially successful,
and 111 (55.8%) were unsuccessful. Initially, it seems that lexical inferencing was not
successful. However, when Nassaji observed the processes behind those learners‟
lexical inferences, he found that one of the major problems leading to incorrect
inferences was that the learners often mistook the target words for another one they are
familiar with, and that they were easily confused by similar-looking words. From
Nassaji‟s study, it seems that although lexical inferencing is the strategy most widely
used by L2 learners, most learners could not use the strategy successfully. Despite the
findings of Nassaji‟s (2003) study, he still did not deny the worth of the existence of
lexical inferencing. Instead, Nassaji put strong emphasis on the importance of learners
being skillfully trained to use the strategy of

lexical inferencing, in order to infer

words successfully.
Lo‟s study (2004) aimed at investigating the effect of lexical inferencing on junior
high school students‟ vocabulary learning and reading comprehension, including the
observation of the types of knowledge sources and contextual cues the students used.

13


The participants were 68 junior high school student – 34 students respectively were in
the experimental group and in the control one. The study procedure included the
pretest, the treatment – lexical inferencing instruction that lasted for four months, and
the posttest. The results showed that there was a significant correlation between
students‟ vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. It meant that the increase
in vocabulary knowledge contributed to better reading comprehension. Besides, the

strategy of lexical inferencing be implemented in students‟ daily class.
From the above empirical studies supporting vocabulary gains using lexical
inferencing, several conclusions can be reached. First, although there are some factors
that affect successfully guessing from context, the substantial positive effect cannot be
denied. Second, it seems that most learners tend to guess word meanings when they
encounter unfamiliar words through reading. As a result, instruction in efficiently using
the strategy of lexical inferencing is strongly recommended.
1.3. Summary
Real vocabulary learning comes through use, but teachers can also help the process
by drawing attention to particular words, and by teaching strategies for learning
vocabulary. Meeting the words in a variety of contexts and using them to express new
ideas provide the most important opportunities for vocabulary learning. There are
strategies to cope with new vocabularies, like guessing the meaning, analyzing word
parts, consulting the dictionary and mnemonic techniques. All these strategies make
learners independent of the teacher while reading and learning vocabulary. In
particular, the most important lexical strategy is guessing from context. It is worth
spending time on this strategy. It is the most powerful way of dealing with unknown
words (Nation, 1990). In recent years, researchers have paid a great deal of attention to
vocabulary learning and have focused on lexical inferencing processes of learners. They
have investigated knowledge sources learners use to make inferences, factors that affect
inferencing, and the effect of inferencing on reading and vocabulary learning. Based on
the literature reviewed in this chapter, this research integrated lexical inferencing
instruction into students‟ English learning to see the effects of lexical inferencing on
students‟ vocabulary learning and reading comprehension, and thus equip students with
the ability to infer word meanings independently while reading.

15


Chapter 2: Research Methodology

Gender

number of

Female Male

Age

participants
46

34

12

English proficiency
Pre -

Low –

Mid-

intermediate

intermediate

intermediate

35



17